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| To match a Russian Feast... Fish with Pomegranate and Walnut Sauce Tevsi Brotseulis Tsvenshi this will get them guessing what the ingredients are and going back for more - I n g r e d i e n t s - Note : Theses are the things that you should have on hand. The amounts should be determined by your own style and sensibilities. The Fish - 2 1/2 Pounds In order of desirability: Black Cod (Sable fish), Ling Cod, Red Snapper, or Talapia Salt - to taste Pepper Medley - Freshly ground Tarragon - Dried Olive Oil The Sauce Red Onions - 2 cut into rings Butter - a cube or more on-hand Walnuts - Pieces, 1 cup or less, chopped Garlic - 2 large cloves, peeled Red Peppers and Jalapenos as noted - To make 3/4 Cup Oat Flour - 3 Tablespoons, or all purpose white flour can be used Pomegranate Juice - 16 oz., half of that reduced Water if needed - T o o l s - Live fire Grill or the closest thing Knife, Cutting Board, Measuring Cup and Spoons 1 Large Frying Pan, 2 small Frying Pans, one with curved sides, Spatulas A brightly colored chaffing dish, which will be your Serving Dish - T h e B i g P i c t u r e - Cold fish dishes are a big part of the appetizer table, and this is one of the more unusual traditional dishes which is more Georgian than Russian. I have adapted this from a recipe from Darra Goldstein found in her great book The Georgian Feast. This version eliminates the tomato paste, looks substantially better, tastes better, and is about three times as complicated. This recipes is a multi-tasking invitation, so please read the entire recipe to figure out your particular strategy. Now I must say, when you take the fish off the grill, this recipe should stop there, but that's not the dish, so...... Black Cod or Sable fish and Ling Cod are the two top choices, but don't drive yourself crazy if you can't find them. Red Snapper is a good second choice, followed by Talapia or similar white fish. Making it the night before will give it enough time for it to settle in and chill. This will be enough appetizer for 20+ people. - T h e F i s h F i r e a n d O n i o n F r y - The night before is a good time to get started on this one. Wash your fish and lay it out so you can sprinkle it with Salt, grind on a medley of green, white, and pink Peppercorns, and a generous sprinkling of dried Tarragon. Flip it and do the same. Pour a coating of non-fancy olive oil on the fish and let it sit for about a half hour or longer. The ideal way to cook this is over the campfire with a smoky oak fire. If you don't have a fire ring, then build one, unless you only have an apartment balcony. In which case, a hibachi or something larger can be used with a few soaked wood chips for the smoke. On our campfire, I use those clamping holders for the fish to make it easy to turn and use the old top from a Weber to keep in the smoke and heat. As you are grilling, drizzle on a bit of the olive oil every couple of minutes. This will dribble off the fish and fall into the fire, causing that refluxing of smoke which gives it the flavor. Don't ever add so much olive oil that you see black smoke. Don't over-cook the fish! When you see it start to flake and separate it is done. Have your final serving dish ready and get the fish off the heat and out of the clamper. Keep it on the rare side to keep it juicy. Transferring into your final serving dish at this point conserves all the juice which will jell later. Go back inside and put the fish into the refrigerator to cool. The next step is to sauté the red onions. Peel the two Red Onions and cut them into discs between 1/8th and 1/4 inch thick and separate them. In a large frying pan with a lid, melt a generous amount of butter, about a half of a cube. Once the butter has gently melted, put in all of your onion rings which you have separated into individual rings. Over medium heat initially, let the onions fry for a while without any browning, turn them so they all get coated with the butter. Then after about five minutes, reduce the heat, put on the lid, and let them soften with only occasional flipping. When all of the crispness of the onions has changed to softness, then you are there, which should take 20 to 30 minutes. Transfer the onions and top the fish evenly, but retain all of the juice and butter in the frying pan for the next step. Retaining this juice is important. - G e t t i n g S a u c e d - There are several steps to the sauce, this is where the multi-tasking comes in. Get started on two, the longest one is to reduce the pomegranate juice and the other is roasting the walnuts. The easiest way to get pomegranate juice is to buy a 16 oz bottle of the POM brand. It is from concentrate, but it's good, just be careful you don't buy a sweetened version. However, if pomegranates are in season, hot dog! You can squeeze your own juice and use the seeds for decoration. To reduce the Pomegranate Juice, put about 8 oz in a saucepan and warm over medium-low heat until it looses a third to a half of its volume. Reserve the other 8 oz of the juice. You need to roast about one cup or less of Walnut Pieces, this is the very Georgian part of the dish. Use your favorite method of roasting with the additions that follow. I like to use a shallow, curve sided, stainless steel pan so I can flip the nuts by tossing them up in the air. ( The trick to doing this is to only watch the lead nut as it comes up and out of the pan toward you. If you catch the lead-nut, you will catch all the others.) Before roasting the walnuts, chop them with a knife so the pieces are not bigger than 1/4 inch and not smaller than 1/8th. Do not use any kind of a processor to chop the nuts because they will make a certain portion of fine meal, which will turn your sauce brown instead of attractively pink. Roast the chopped walnuts in your pan and when they have turned a little brown add less than a Tablespoon of Butter and about a half of a teaspoon of Salt. Continue to flip and roast them until the next stage of browning. Remove them from the pan leaving as many of the brown skins behind as possible and let them cool. Now you want to make the roux. In the pan that you used to sauté the onion rings, there should be the reserved butter and onion juice from that process. Put medium heat under the pan and add a half cube of butter, (4 Tablespoons) let it melt, but don't let it brown. Once melted slowly add 3 Tablespoons of Oat or Wheat Flour while whisking. Once it is in 'solution' then slowly add in the reduced pomegranate juice whisking all the time. Now start adding the rest of the reserved juice (not reduced) until it has reached a thin sauce consistency. If you run out of juice, use water. Making a roux resists recipes, so feel free to go where the roux wants to take you, but still, not too thick. - The Peppers - To the essentially completed roux, you need to add some more color and a little flavor. Do this with chopped red peppers. The first choice is a hot or sweet Red Pepper that you are only going to find at a farmer's market. The next choice is a jalapeno pepper that has turned red, and the last choice is a red bell pepper. In all cases, eliminate the stems and seeds. In the hot cases, you can leave a small amount of the vein on which will add a little kick, which is quite desirable. If you are using red bell peppers, you can add some jalapeno with some vein to get the picante right. Dice up the peppers until you have about a 3 quarters of a Cup. Put the most of it in the hot roux, and reserve the rest for the topping. Cook them for a couple of minutes to let the flavor incorporate and to soften them just a bit. Then add about a hand full of the roasted Walnuts and simmer gently for another couple of minutes. Reserve the rest of the walnuts for decoration. Adjust the salt level to what you want, add more liquid until you have the thinnish consistency, and the sauce is done. In the refrigerator is your fish topped with the onions. Pour the sauce over all of that. The sauce should be thin enough that you will still see some of the onion rings poking through. Take the reserved Walnuts, sprinkle them on, and then confetti on the remaining diced peppers. At long last, you are done. Put it back into the refrigerator, covered with film, and let it cool. - T o T h e A p p e t i z e r T a b l e - Take the dish out of the refrigerator, and with a serving spatula you complete everything, dream about good food and what you are going to say on your second toast. We would like to thank Darra Goldstein for inspiring this recipe. The author of At the Dacha, Russian Home Cooking This book is out of print, and it must be loved because it's hard to find used ones, but she has others. Go to Amazon.com and type in Darra Goldstein in the search box. We have adapted her recipes here and there, but done under the watchful eye of Andy Zaharoff. Next Page |